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NASHVILLE'S LADY
BOUNTIFUL

Married to a multi-millionaire, former reporter and TV anchor Ruth Ann Leach
Harnisch, of Nashville, Tennessee, doesn't believe in doing good by stealth. And
she has discovered that it's better to give than to receive.

Six years ago, she established the Harnisch Family Foundation, which so far
has made donations totalling more than $1,500,000 to hundreds of recipients.

"I'm a thrillionaire," she says, "someone who knows the thrill of giving.
It's a genuine thrill to have the ability and the willingness to share my money
and my time. But I'll admit it's not always a thrill to be asked.

"When I was a less experienced donor, I was often overwhelmed by the sheer
volume of 'asks'. My mailbox was filled with requests. People phoned to ask for
money. Worse, they phoned asking for an appointment. (When they want to see me,
it means they want at least three zeroes on that check. Maybe more.)

"I know how much I gave and when. If I didn't, I'd be tempted to respond
spontaneously to multiple requests from charities that ask throughout the year.
And I toss, unopened, without guilt or regret, countless direct mail
solicitations."

Ruth Ann's husband, William F. (Bill) Harnisch, is chairman of Forstmann-Leff
Associates, a New York money firm which manages investments worth $6 billion. He
shares his wife's enthusiasm for supporting a wide range of worthwhile projects.

Interviewed by Money Manager Review, he said the Harnisch Family
Philanthropies had given grants for research into the causes and cure of
Tourette's Syndrome, and for Habitat for Humanity houses, training sessions for
women interested in seeking public office, diversion programs for first-time
arrestees, scholarships for at-risk youth, conflict resolution workshops for
public schools, studies of women on corporate boards, preventing urban sprawl,
the development of a national non-profit organization addressing the growing
income gap, and hundreds of other organizations.

One of the Foundation's main aims is to promote literacy. When Seattle
wordsmith Anu Garg published his A Word A Day book last year, the
Foundation undertook to present copies to needy schools and libraries around the
world, at the rate of one a day. More than 300 books have already been sent to
50 countries.

BRITISH LADY BOUNTIFULS

Once upon a time, this kind of philanthropy would have been
the exclusive preserve of the toffs who saw their responsibility as giving
handouts to the deserving poor. But if yesterday's Lady Bountiful was a
duchess, today's is more likely to be a media personality; our great and
good have expanded to include the media-ocracy as well as the aristocracy.

More important, it reveals that the welfare state, which was supposed to
have replaced Lady Bountiful, has failed. We have lost confidence in its
ability to educate, and improve the wellbeing of, our most needy citizens.
We -- or at least our media moguls -- now feel we must step in to get things
moving. The new Lady Bountifuls may look down their noses and sound as
self-righteous as their predecessors. But the results of their charitable
efforts are impressive -- and it all makes for great television, too.
-
Lady Bountiful is dead. Long live Jamie Oliver and Lord Puttnam! (New
Statesman, Jan 13, 2003, by Cristina Odone).

The first Lady Bountiful was a character in The Beaux- Stratagem, a
comic play by Irish dramatist George Farquhar (1677-1707). Here's part of the
dialogue. The speaker is the innkeeper Will Boniface (another name which, like
Lady Bountiful's, has survived as an eponym for 300 years):

Thomas Aimwell: Who's that Lady
Bountiful you mentioned?

Will Boniface: Ods my life, sir, we'll drink
her health. [Drinks.] My Lady Bountiful is one of the best of women. Her last
husband, Sir Charles Bountiful, left her worth a thousand pound a year; and, I
believe, she lays out one-half on't in charitable uses for the good of her
neighbours. She cures rheumatisms, ruptures, and broken shins in men;
green-sickness, obstructions, and fits of the mother, in women; the king's evil,
chincough, and chilblains, in children: in short, she has cured more people in
and about Lichfield within ten years than the doctors have killed in twenty; and
that's a bold word.